Martin Best

Evaluating models designed to represent the surface energy balance on urban environments

Member of the Earth and Environmental Dynamics research group.

I have worked in the Met Office on land surface science for over 20 years and was made a research fellow in 2012. I currently lead the research and model development in this area, which includes managing the JULES community land surface model. I have been a member of the GEWEX GLASS panel for almost a decade and have co-chaired the panel for four years. I have worked on the land surface science on all special and temporal scales, gaining an understanding of requirements from all perspectives. I was the first person to implement an urban scheme within both weather forecast and climate models, designed and co-ordinated the first international urban model comparison project and has served two terms on the American Meteorological Society Board on the Urban Environment (BUE).

I am currently leading an international benchmarking project to assess land surface models against a number of simple physical and empirical models using the web-based PALS system. I am also leading an international experiment on assessing land-atmosphere coupling strength within the numerical models used for weather and climate prediction.

For my PhD I am analysing results from the first international urban model comparison experiment that I designed and lead. This analysis will be used to identify the behaviour of urban models and the level of complexity required to represent the urban environment. Various aspects of analysis of the data will be considered which include:
1. The main questions for the comparison, which were to assess the dominant physical characteristics of the urban environment, to assess how complex urban models need to be, and what the parameter requirements of such models are.
2. The seasonal cycle of the urban models
3. The impact of initial conditions on the performance of the models
4. The influence of weather conditions on the evaluation of the urban models
5. The importance of the anthropogenic heat flux in the urban surface energy balance
6. The importance of representing vegetation in the urban environment.